textproduct: Rapid City

KEY MESSAGES

- It will still remain very warm to hot heading into the weekend.

- Near critical fire weather conditions will continue daily.

- Isolated thunderstorms may develop over the Black Hills Thursday afternoon, with slightly better chances moving in for the weekend.

UPDATE

Issued at 922 PM MDT Tue Jul 14 2026

No significant changes made to the forecast. Upper level ridge will continue to bring hot temperatures to the FA through the rest of the week. Weak trough will settle into the area Thur with LL moisture increasing. This will support TS chances over the Black Hills during the afternoon Thur-Sat as conditional instability increases. Ridge will flatten later this weekend, with TS chances returning to parts of the FA into next week.

DISCUSSION

(This Evening Through Tuesday) Issued at 1219 PM MDT Tue Jul 14 2026

A large upper level area of high pressure continues to dominate the weather as this high pressure continues to center over the Central Plains, with the surface high pressure situated over Iowa. Underneath this area of high pressure, skies are clear and temperatures will continue to climb to over 100F. This trend will continue into Wednesday before we begin to see a breakdown of the high pressure and eastern Wyoming and western South Dakota become influenced by the western periphery of this system where monsoonal moisture is being pulled up from the Desert southwest all the way up into western Montana.

As this trend continues into Thursday we could see enough mid level moisture associated with the monsoon creep into our area and initiate some isolated (1 or 2 storms) over the terrain in the Black Hills. These storms will pose a dry lightning and strong downburst wind threat and produced little to no rainfall. These type of storms will also keep the fire threat high throughout the rest of the week.

Looking ahead into the weekend models keep us under the influence of a thermal ridge that will once again keep much of our region in the triple digit heat. This trend will need to be monitored for the extension of Heat Highlights.

AVIATION

(For the 18Z TAFS Through 18Z Thursday) Issued At 1125 AM MDT Wed Jul 15 2026

Look for VFR conditions to continue at the terminal locations through the valid TAF period. There will be a minor wind shift at KGCC after 16/00Z.

UNR WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

SD...Heat Advisory until 9 PM MDT /10 PM CDT/ Thursday for SDZ001-002- 012>014-025>027-030>032-041>044-046-047-049-072>078. WY...Heat Advisory until 9 PM MDT Thursday for WYZ054>056-058>060.